4 killed in 7 separate S.F. shootings

Updated 8:12 pm, Monday, July 7, 2014

A rash of violence in San Francisco's Bayview and Visitacion Valley neighborhoods escalated Monday, bringing the number of people killed in recent days to four in seven separate shootings, including the father of a 9-year-old girl who was on his way to the store.

Two shootings that happened early Monday were deadly - one at 9:30 a.m. on Ironwood Way in the Bayview, the other a 3:30 a.m. attack on Brookdale Avenue in the Sunnydale public housing complex in Visitacion Valley. There, a 24-year-old man was shot in the head.

Michelle Martin, the longtime partner of the man who was killed on Ironwood Way, identified him as 30-year-old Keith Zinn. She said that the couple had a daughter and that he worked in restaurants while trying to get a business, Zinn's Finest Chocolates, off the ground.

"He was going to Walgreens to pick up some stuff for the home," said Martin, 27, while standing near the crime scene, her voice cracking. "I thought I was going to see him again in 20 minutes."

She said the killing was a drive-by attack. As she gathered the courage to break the news to her daughter, she said, "She's going to be crushed. She just doesn't understand the violence that's been happening out here."

The slayings followed a string of shootings Sunday in the Bayview that began at 12:22 a.m., when a 16-year-old boy standing in front of a home on Cameron Way in the Alice Griffith public housing complex was shot by a man in a passing car.

The gunman also fired into the home, grazing the left cheek of a 27-year-old man inside. The teenager was in critical condition at San Francisco General Hospital.

Around 2:54 a.m. Sunday, someone opened fire on two men standing in front of a home on the 1700 block of La Salle Avenue. City resident Antonio Cortez, 37, died three hours later at San Francisco General. The other victim, a 49-year-old man, was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, police said.

Then at 5 p.m. Sunday, someone in a gray Nissan opened fire on two men, ages 19 and 20, on Harbor Road, police said. The older man was shot in the face, leg and back, and the 19-year-old was shot in both legs. Both were hospitalized and were expected to survive.

The series of shootings began Thursday, when a 10-year-old boy and 32-year-old man standing on the 900 block of Connecticut Street in Potrero Hill were wounded by gunfire from a nearby hill at about 3:30 p.m., police said. The boy was shot in the foot and the man was wounded in the thigh and hand, police said. Both were expected to survive.

On Friday, 49-year-old Wesley Willis of San Francisco was sitting in a car at Harbor Road and Ingalls Street in the Bayview around 10 p.m. when an assailant came up from behind and opened fire, police said. Willis died at the scene.

No arrests have been announced in any of the bloodshed, and police have not said whether any of the shootings may be related.

The violence was an abrupt departure from what had been a relatively peaceful year. There were just 14 homicides recorded in the first six months of 2014 in a city that, from 2004 to 2008, had averaged 93 killings a year.

"The city has taken a hit," said Sgt. Danielle Newman, a police spokeswoman. "But homicides, especially shootings, tend to increase over the summer months."

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